


Kept

by Snow



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow





	Kept

Alec asked what Richard was going to do with him if he wasn't going to kill him, and Richard didn't have to think about answering, instead he just nodded and said, "Keep."

Alec can feel the walls closing in, feel the heaviness of the air as he tries to figure out how much oxygen is getting in, past the mass of people in the bar and all the way over to his position, far from the door -- but then Richard is pressing forward and gesturing at Alec to follow, and then they're out in the night air and Alec can smell the decay in the river and the mud in the streets and at least it's something, enough to calm his breaths, to force enough oxygen into his lungs that by the time they're home he tries to exhaust it again in kissing Richard.

Alec is clenching his hair-ribbon in his hand, his nails digging little crescents into his palm, when Richard wraps his hand around the edge of it -- not trying to stop Alec, just being there with him.

"Hold me," Alec pleads, half-surfacing from a nightmare, and Richard does that and more; he fills up Alec's whole world until there's nothing else, until Alec can't even remember what was wrong in the first place.

Alec had always thought that it was the mystery that Richard liked about him, the fact that there was someone out there whose very presence in his life was a challenge to sort out, but just now, lying naked in Alec's bed with silk sheets underneath them and a servant of Diane's puttering in the hallway, not even aware that they're here, there wasn't anything about Alec that Richard didn't know, but he was still here, somehow.


End file.
